Abstract
This chapter examines South African SMMEs adoption of e-commerce. The chapter is concerned with four e-commerce adoption options: 1) customer payment by credit card through the SMME's website, 2) customer placing orders through the SMME's website, 3) providing customer services through the SMME's website, and 4) placing orders with suppliers over the internet. By using a sample of 400 conveniently sampled SMME owners, this chapter explores the adoption of the four e-commerce options in two geographic areas within South Africa, Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Specifically, the chapter seeks to establish the extent of the adoption of the four e-commerce options in both locations in relation to the SMMEs' business coverage. Findings revealed that although SMMEs from Durban and Pietermaritzburg have adopted all of the four e-commerce options to various degrees, such adoption is only significant for SMMEs whose business operations extend beyond the local level. Additionally, internet security was identified as a key impediment towards e-commerce adoption in both areas.
TopLiterature Review
Schaper & Volery (2004) state that there are two ways of defining a business: quantitatively and qualitatively. The former refers to the numerical characteristics of businesses, including size. The size of a business as defined in terms of the number of employees and/or annual turnover has been the most widely used quantitative measure to categorise businesses. Researchers commonly define SMMEs based on the number of employees (Hashim, 2009a). The definition of SMMEs in terms of the number of full-time employees stems from the fact that employment as a criterion for classification is more objective, transparent and less confidential than company annual turnover (Pratten, 1991).
In South Africa, SMMEs are defined as businesses that employ less than 200 full-time employees. The size of an SMME (in terms of the number of full-time employees) differs according to the business sector it falls under. However, in all sectors, the size limit of an SMME is 200 full-time employees, except in the agricultural sector where the size limit is 100 full-time employees (Goldstuck, 2012). A small enterprise has up to 50 employees, a medium enterprise has between 51 to 200 employees. Firms with less than 20 employees are classified as very small enterprises. A micro enterprise has up to 5 employees (Goldstuck, 2012; BusinessTech, 2019). The South African definition of SMMEs which is based on the company’s number of full-time employees is adopted in this study.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Gross Domestic Product (GDP): Is the monetary value of all finished goods and services made within a country during a specific period.
Disposable Income: Is the income remaining after deduction of taxes and social security charges, available to be spent or saved as one wishes.
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI): A multidisciplinary field of study focusing on the design of computer technology, and, in particular, the interaction between humans (the users) and computers.
Digital Marketing: The component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones, and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.
Chi-Square Test of Independence: A statistical test used to determine if there is a significant relationship between two nominal (categorical) variables.